7 Habits – Part I

This could be a little off the topic of this blog, but I just feel like sharing this. There are 7 parts of various length of this text, so sometimes it may look like “too many words”, sometimes it will not. In any case, here we go.

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Being proactive is like being constantly hungry. While chasing the next opportunity, next customer or approaching next deadline, being proactive may mean various things: from staying up late in order to finish the presentation, to removing all but necessary resources from a project so that nothing is intervening on that last mile. However, all these variations have some base to them. It’s the constant search for an opportunity to do better. In my business most customers think that every little change requires little time even though in 90% of cases it is not so. Being proactive for me means offering something, whether it’s a service or a product, or both, that will be more than customer wanted, but, thanks to me being proactive, he doesn’t have to ask for. On the other side, being too proactive is purely bad because offering too much leaves a customer dissatisfied. Why dissatisfied? Because after a customer rejects the proposal for whatever reason, it leaves him with the impression that you’ve offered more, but yet he got less. That’s why many books insist on following the simple rule: promise less, deliver more. Experience shows that this works like a charm. Another disadvantage of being too proactive is that customers start feeling this constant sales push and start avoiding you. It usually happens at times when you need this least. Finding balance, as always, is the hardest thing to do. It is number 1 on my TO-DO list.